"Snap is a promising early stage company with significant opportunity ahead of itself.

"Unfortunately, it is significantly overvalued given the likely scale of its long-term opportunity and the risks associated with executing against that opportunity," wrote analyst Brian Wieser from Pivotal Research in a note. He gave it a "sell" rating.

Others were more positive.

Before the trading debut, Jordan Hiscott, chief trader at Ayondo Markets, said: "What sets it apart from other messaging apps like WhatsApp for me is the innovative features built into the app's interface, such as the lenses function.

"A pertinent point in the company's S1 filing for the IPO is that it doesn't call itself a messaging service, but a camera company."

"This seems to be an intentional move to differentiate it from Facebook and Twitter and the success and failure of their respective IPOs, which in my view, is very clever."